HOMOSEXUALITY, SINGLENESS, AND CELIBACY
The topic of a Christian understanding of homosexuality and a Christian and pastoral response to homosexuality is related in some ways to a Christian view of singleness. There is a need, particularly among Protestant Christians, to revisit our view of singleness and how we communicate what we value in the local church. If most of our programming is geared toward marriages and families in ways that communicate a devaluing of the single state, we will (perhaps unintentionally) convey to the person who contends with same-sex attractions that they must attain heterosexuality to find a spiritual home in the body of Christ. Recent scholarship on a Christian understanding of singleness suggests that marriage alone cannot convey all that there is to know and experience of God’s nature. Lisa McMinn illustrates this well: The fullness of God’s nature cannot be captured in one human who bears God’s image, in marriage as a model of God’s love for the Church, or in one of Christianity’s...